Early in her career, Elizabeth Carter did much to make the woman writer "respectable," taking advantage of the new opportunities offered by the periodical press, dealin gconfidently from an early age with publishers and literary men, and dedicating herslef to impressive scholarship, without arousing the mockery or hostility usually directed at women who wrote professionally or at "learned ladies," For thse reasons she was often cited and hailed with some awe as an exemplary figure for women. Having won high literary reputation and financial security by the 1760s, she did not thereafter develop this inspirational role. Her elegant and decorous, if relatively small, output of verse was highly influential...but its effect was mostly inhibiting. An obituary praised the "Sublime simplicity of sentiment, melodious sweetness of expression, and morality the most amiable" in her poems, but her nephew and biographer granted her "ease, correctness, and elegance" rather than "fire or strength." She is perhaps doomed to be best remembered for Johnson's intended compliment, that "My old friend, Mrs. Carter, could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus." (Lonsdale 166-167)
There's a tone of disappointment to this narrative; Lonsdale seems to think that Carter somehow let the team down. Without having read Carter's work, you are not in a position to evaluate the "fire and strength" of her verse, but as readers of a broad swathe of C18 women's poetry, you do have a context for evaluating the interpretive frame Lonsdale puts around it, particularly given the very different spin that Griffits gives it in #92, "By the same on reading Eliza. Carters poems" (p. 263-264). Your reflections?
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Hannah Griffitts notes the ‘fire and strength’ in Elizabeth Carter’s poetry, the existence of which Roger Lonsdale denies. Griffitts recognizes how “Each pow’rful Charm that Language can inspire . . . & the Poets Fire” were attributable to Carter’s work. Though she gives her opinion of fellow female poet Carter without mentioning her gender even once, Lonsdale makes frequent reference to Carter’s sex, noting that “she was often cited and hailed with some awe as an exemplary figure for women.” Lonsdale and Griffitts obviously have contrasting perspectives of Elizabeth Carter as a poet, but Lonsdale seems to be correct, at least on the subject of Carter’s status as “an exemplary figure for women.” If Griffitts’s adulation of Carter’s poetry is seen as awe for a woman whose act of writing served as a sort of model for her own, then Lonsdale is right on target. If Griffitts takes Carter’s poetic endeavors as evidence that she can do the same, which could explain her adamant praise, then she is fitting Lonsdale’s mold exactly. It seems, however, that Griffitts does not mention Carter for reasons concerned with gender, and thus, refutes Lonsdale's point.
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